Six Nations billionaire invites MacKay, O’Toole to Grand River to discuss CPC’s relationship with indigenous people

Ken Hill, the billionaire entrepreneur and tobacco mogul from the Six Nations Reserve in Southern Ontario, has extended an open invitation to Conservative Party Leadership candidates Peter MacKay and Erin O’Toole to private discussions at his home on the sovereign Grand River Territory.  Hill is interested in learning more about each man’s views of indigenous sovereignty and nation-building — and intends to share his views on what a pro-indigenous policy platform might look like for the Conservative Party of Canada.

No dates have been confirmed, but we are told that both Leadership candidates intend to meet with Hill and Jerry Montour, the billionaire co-owner of Grand River Enterprises. One indigenous political operative offers The Chronicle a few suggestions for pro-Indigenous conservative policy positions:

1. Nation-to-Nation to relations with indigenous governments that pre-date Canada, embracing the Doctrine of Tribal Sovereignty.  The Haudenosaunee Confederacy was established under the Great Law of Peace, codified in 1142.  It is the oldest still-existent constitutional democracy in the world and continues to meet in Council on the first Saturday of each month.
2. Phase-out the Indian Act, dissolve band councils, and restructure band council instrumentalities such that they report to traditional governments.  For too many generations, the Canadian federal government had defrauded indigenous people by imposing federally employed Indian Agents on reserve communities and then negotiates away their rights with those federally employed agents pretending they are an appropriate counterparty.  This governance conflict has prevented a functioning Crown-Indigenous relationship — preventing progress on scores of infrastructure projects.
3. Participation in NAFTA/USMCA renewal talks every six years as an equal party to that treaty. The new North American trade agreement known as USMCA largely excludes Tribes and First Nations, other than a paragraph affirming existing Aboriginal and Treaty rights. Indigenous people — especially those business people struggling against colonial legal frameworks designed to subjugate indigenous economies and to prevent indigenous nation-building — want to formally participate in six-year USMCA renewal talks.  They hope that the treaty process will further affirm and codify indigenous rights to sovereign Nation-to-Nation commerce.
4. Member-State status in the United Nations General Assembly for sovereign indigenous governments that pre-date Canada.  Promoting the membership of Canada’s indigenous people at the United Nations could give North America dozens of additional votes in the General Assembly.

Sources tell The Chronicle that Hill and Montour have the resources, reach, and intelligence network to remove Justin Trudeau from the Prime Minister’s Office. They are reluctant to do so until they have a deeper understanding of the party’s views of indigenous self-determination and nation-building.